Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

We were kindly provided this wine by local wine agent Mer et Soleil .  Celinda from Mer et Soleil gave us a few selections from Italy to try and this was our first selection from the group.  At $14 locally we figured it was a nice price point. As a point of reference we use the term Chianti and Sangiovese interchangeably as Sangiovese is the main grape in the Italian blend known as Chianti. We sometimes find Chianti to be light and really tart instead of more medium bodied and the tartness can go to the point of bitterness.  That means we take a cautious approach to these wines when we buy them.  Cheap Chianti can equal bad Chianti pretty easily.  This wine is 100% Sangiovese and the good news is that is not the case here. Sangiovese can be light in colour and almost transparent in the the glass.  This wine from the Adriatic coastal Marche region of Italy (which is a very French name for an Italian wine region) is much darker than th...

Courtesy  montecristomagazine.com This past Friday we were fortunate enough to be invited to a wine tasting event at the Halifax Club for Sandhill Wines from British Columbia.  The event featured Howard Soon the Master Winemaker for Sandhill and what followed was an awesome display of great wines from the Okanagan Valley. Howard gave us a really great run down of the vineyards they draw their grapes from and it was really interesting to see the variance of temperature, climate, and varieties being grown.  He was very generous with his time talking about the challenges of growing grapes like Sangiovese and Barbera in the Okanagan.  He showed us pictures of the cliffs at the base of the vineyard that hold in the heat to allow the Italian varieties to ripen.  Really interesting. We tried a number of their wines, all listed locally, and found out that Sandhill has made a very thoughtful point of ensuring that their wines are the same price across this varie...